


Unforgiving Memory

by Yunimori



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Mind Control, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-03 03:41:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21172823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yunimori/pseuds/Yunimori
Summary: Sometimes nightmares aren't just nightmares. Memories are sometimes the worst ones of all, and dealing with the recall is never an easy thing, even if you aren't in control of yourself. Shockwave may have his heart and mind back, but that does not mean his memories are any easier.  (PTSD mind-control trigger, if that bothers you PLEASE, please do not read.)





	Unforgiving Memory

**Author's Note:**

> I'm copying all of my Shockwave and Optimus/Shockwave ficlets and drabbles from my tumblr accounts over to my ao3 account. Most of these are going to be incredibly short (hence the drabble tag), and either in short-form format or 100 Themes Challenge format.
> 
> This is just for my own peace of mind, making sure they are safe from tumblr's random purges.
> 
> However, feel free to read them and let me know if you enjoyed them!

There were moments of clarity. Few and far between, punctuated by discussion-snippets in an alien tongue and the roars of tremendous, caged beasts, but they _were_ there. Moments that he spent wondering where he was, why he could barely comprehend what was going on around him, why everything seemed as distant as a broken hologram even as he moved, his limbs obeying orders he didn’t remember giving. Sometimes he had enough time to wonder at the snippets of conversation going on around him.

“_This one is easier to control than the dinosaurs.”_

_“That’s because it’s _not_ a dinosaur.”_

_“I don’t think so. It fights the programming just as hard as they do, but it never even gets past the first security level. It gives up, like something is broken in its head and can’t handle fighting more.”_

_“It’s a robot, Collins. You’re putting tragic-romance fiction on a hunk of walking metal and wiring.”_

_“I don’t know, sir. I really think something is broken in it. Its spirit seems to be…gone.”_

_“It’s a _robot_, Collins. But if something _is_ broken, that’s what the bomb is for. Backup.”_

He assumed the aliens were talking about him. “Robot” was something of a dead-giveaway, after all, once he correlated the foreign word with an appropriate one in his own vocabulary. Shockwave vaguely wondered what ‘bomb’ was being talked about, but didn’t have the time to follow that idle trail of thought before pain raced through him faster than an electric shock.

After that, he didn’t think. He simply _did_. He heard the roars of the Dinobots with him, felt the screeching of metal turning into pain of injury as he battled…_something_…at the whim of others. A living weapon, a Raptor, screaming to the heavens about a purge even as Shockwave filled its torso full of bullets, causing the cacophony that shook his insides and dimmed his vision to vanish. He thought nothing of it. None of it. He _couldn’t_ think. He could merely record memories and do the bidding of the small, organic creatures that told him when to wake, when to sleep, when to move. 

And in between, those moments of clarity. When they told him of the bomb in his head, of what would happen if he continued to fight the reprogramming pulses they kept him chained with, he was able to think. He was able to threaten them with destruction, though he knew, for those few moments, that his threats were empty. The humans, however, did not.

“_We’re sending you against the dinosaurs. Bring them back within 24 hours or we will detonate the bomb in your head.”_

“I could cause a lot of destruction in 24 hours before I die.”

“_You won’t get the chance_.”

They tightened their hold on him, though they didn’t detonate the bomb in his mask. 

His moments of clarity came even more grudgingly. When he had them, they were filled with recorded memories on playback, keeping him from forming new thoughts, trying to process what he had seen and heard while not in control of any part of himself. The destruction of another alien species invading this planet, the hunting of the renegade Dinobots, the re-capture of Swoop, the conversations of the humans as he lay in one of their repair bays, waiting on crude welds to take effect so he would be functional again…at their leisure.

“_See, look, it’s happening again. A spike in brain-wave activity when we reinforce the control-pulse, same as when it fights.”_

_“Well, isn’t that to be expected? We _are_ making it respond to our orders.”_

_“No, not really. This isn’t like a response-ping. That comes later, and it’s automatic. This behaves more like what happens when an unconscious human is in great distress. It’s that kind of brain activity. Just…not organic.”_

_“What, you’re saying the robot is _distressed_ that we’re controlling it? From what I’ve seen when it’s sentient, it has no emotions whatsoever. It’s a cold killing machine.”_

_“That’s exactly what I’m saying. It may be a killing machine, but I think we’re…tapping into something that was broken before we found it. We’re hurting it when we reestablish control…and when we make it fight.”  
_

_“You’re doing the tragic-romance thing again, Collins. Get those notions out of your head before I dismiss you from this project.”_

“_Yes sir.”_

Then came the moment of pain, a jerking as though he were being torn apart from the inside. A sequence of rapid-fire numbers spiking through his skull in a voice he knew even as he regained tortuous control of his body, mental fog banishing itself in a lightning-strike of agony that started in his skull.

That was when Shockwave woke up and _sat _up in a cold sweat, anguish and panic arcing through him like an electric shock. He heard himself cry out, making Gizmo growl from the foot of his bed, and _that_ snapped him back to reality. 

This was home. _He_ was home. No longer the monster without a heart that he had been, and definitely no longer controlled by Skywatch, however short that time might have been in the grand scheme of things. No longer. 

…he could still remember, though. And as he looked at Gizmo, her dark brown eyes staring at him soulfully from the middle of her furry, black and white head, Shockwave felt himself start to shake. “…well…th…they weren’t…wrong about me being…being broken…”


End file.
